This month, some November autumn colour, and part one of reviewing our vegetable and fruit growing year.  Starting with some of our vegetables.  Overall this year harvests on most crops were down on usual, more a reflection of the weather and concomitant pests and diseases than lack of effort on our part.  We started the year on a positive note, aiming to have the vegetable beds ready for planting ahead of time, by weeding and mulching them as soon as we could reasonably stand on them.   We were trying a new-to-us mulch product, the digestate from a local anaerobic digesting plant which once it has made the electric energy, sells the green matter digestate in bulk dumpy bags – just what I needed!  Here is one of our large vegetable beds almost completely mulched, to show you a) the depth of mulch (at least 10cm), and the consistency of the mulch:-

This is supposed to not only condition the soil and be a weed suppressant, but also a deterrent to slugs.  I was extremely sceptical about the latter property, but, I mulched round the beans when they were planted:-

And not only did I NOT have problems with slugs and snails eating the new bean shoots (unlike normal), but as you can see from this photo from the end of October when the bean plants were removed, it suppressed the weeds on the bean trenches too:-

I planted gherkins in these trenches too, and they were unaffected by slugs – as you can see here growing on 30 July:-

These were a successful crop this year, with many jars of dill pickle made.   As I said in my August article, the cold spring that moved into a cold start to summer delayed my beans in their growth, but after taking more than a month to get half way up the poles, with the sudden few days of warmth at the end of July they spurted up to the top. 

However, they didn’t grow naturally much higher than the cane tops (NOT like usual).  I was pleased with the harvest in August, as I was picking a carrier bag of French beans, (from two double rows of beans), and half a bag of runner (from one double row of beans) twice a week for a fortnight.  

I grew three sorts of French bean (Blue Lake, Cosse de Violette and Cobra) to spread the harvesting period, as well as both red and white flowered runner beans as a spread bet on the weather (one is supposed to do better at setting fruit in heat than the other).  However, August was a dry month here and though I soaked the roots, and sprayed the plants to try and persuade them to set flowers and fruit, all the varieties just gave the one flush of flowers, and then stopped producing.  This is a big problem for me as we live on our veg, so I want the longest possible harvest period and to have surplus to freeze/pickle/chutney.  I had enough to eat fresh, and to pickle for the year, but not to freeze.  Most French beans not only didn’t produce more flowers or fruit, they dropped their leaves in early September.

Last few beans 24 September:-

Although the runners didn’t lose their leaves, and kept lovely green lush leaves well into October, they set no more flowers at all.   

Even the purple climbing French bean Cosse de Violette that I had especially grown a larger number of this year as they had been such a good long reliable cropper last year shed their leaves and refused to flower again.  I can only assume that they were so stressed by their first few weeks of (non) growth in June they rushed to flower and set seed as fast as they could. 

Having mentioned beans getting stressed, many of our chard and perpeptual spinach plants bolted shortly after being planted out, which is not usual.  We have therefore had a reduced crop of these, but have been harvesting them all summer ok, though there will be little to keep over winter.  Many of the kales that I showed you pricked out last month were eaten by slugs and we therefore have considerably fewer kale plants than expected this year for the winter.  This despite the greens tunnel being mulched with the digestate as the beans had been – so not such a good record with slug control there!  We started cropping the kales in October and again, are unlikely to have enough to see us through the winter.   Here’s a harvest from 10 October:-

I shall talk about our tomato growing experiments next month. 

Courgettes were our biggest disaster.  I planted out 10 bush courgettes of three different sorts, and two climbing courgettes (tromboni). 

As usual they were planted on mounds – the digestate was used as a layer at the bottom of the hole (instead of grass clippings which we usually use), and the soil mounded over it mixed with a manure compost.  Three of the bush plants were mullered by slugs in the first two nights and never grew at all.  Of the other plants, most REALLY struggled to produce viable flowers to be pollinated before the slugs got them, and if the female flowers were pollinated most fruit was destroyed before it could grow.   I just about managed to keep us in fresh courgettes for July and August, but the crop was over by September, with none to freeze/cook into ratatouille and freeze/make chutney with etc, this will REALLY be a big gap in our diet this winter, as I use at least 500g of frozen courgettes per week all year normally in our cooking, and this year we will have to BUY other veg!  Again, the climbing courgettes are supposed to be a later cropping plant, and to continue through October, but they started cropping immediately, and stopped early September.

I planted two climbing nasturtium plants between the two climbing courgettes, both as a sacrificial plant so the blackfly would leave my beans alone (they did, but they also left the nasturtiums alone too!), and as a crop of peppery leaves and flowers.  My next door neighbour suddenly contacted me towards the end of August saying that her nasturtiums had been completely overwhelmed by cabbage white caterpillars and all the leaves were gone, were mine ok?  I went to check and strangely mine were fine.  Smug me.  A week later, OMG.  They completely defoliated both plants.  If a leaf looked “green” still, it was because it was literally covered in a carpet of caterpillars!  I didn’t’ remove the plants to the compost, and suddenly realised by the middle of October, they were full of leaf and flower again, and we have been harvesting the flowers for our lunch salad’s right into November.  

New to us this year was mini-corn on the cobs, to pick and eat raw whole.  These worked great, and we were very pleased with them, though we initially left them to get too big before harvesting.  Here they are on the plant, and as a mixed harvest third week of September:-

I shall update you on the tomatoes, and our fruit growing/harvesting progress next month.  Now I shall, as promised show you some autumn colour in the garden in November.  As it was so mild we still had all these to enjoy, starting with Dahlia “Pooh”, with a happy bee:-

Alstromeria ‘Summer Snow’:-

Lion’s Tail still going strong – Leonotis Leonurus:-

A favourite at this time of year – Toad Lily, Tricyrtis hirta ‘Taiwan Atrianne’:-

Two seasonal bulbs, firstly a River Lily – Hesperantha coccinea ‘Cindy Towe’:-

(Obviously doing very well in the damp and soggy weather we’ve been having!), Secondly, as a hybrid of Amaryllis and Nerine, more used to drier sunnier conditions, x Amarine tubergeni ‘Aphrodite’ (Belladiva Series):-

Sadly, not from my own garden, but included for its beautiful scented flowers from November on this lovely Camellia hiemalis ‘Sparkling Burgundy’:-

Next time, more autumn colour, and the continuation of our fruit and veg seasons in 2024. 

Sending you all Seasons Greetings from our Chalk Hillside.

Sheila May